Tom Sawyer Abroad
1894
Tom Sawyer is bored, and that's dangerous. The glory of his previous adventures has faded back in Hannibal, Missouri, so naturally he dreams up something absurd: a hot air balloon to Africa. Huck Finn and Jim are roped into the scheme, and soon they're soaring over desert and jungle in a contraption that defies every law of physics, and probably aerodynamics too. Tom sees himself as a fearless explorer destined for legendary conquest. Huck sees a fool in a flying barrel. The tension between Tom's grandiose imagination and Huck's deadpan skepticism drives the whole thing, especially when they're dodging lions, outwitting robbers, or watching Tom lecture them about the glory of exploration while fleas eat them alive. Twain is having fun here, mocking the adventure genre even as he delivers one. The satire cuts both ways, Tom's inflated ambitions are ridiculous, but there's something stubborn and almost admirable about his refusal to accept mundane reality. The Pyramids loom. The Sphinx watches. And Tom, naturally, has a theory about that too.
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“I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.””
— Mark Twain
“A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.””
— Mark Twain
“There ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about. -- Huck Finn””
— Mark Twain
“As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler, and listened and tried to learn, it would be better for them.””
— Mark Twain
“So it shows that for all the brag you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for real unerringness. Jim says the same.””
— Mark Twain
“He was a good enough sort of cretur, and hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which wasn't his fault.””
— Mark Twain
“I don't see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any occasion to use 'em.””
— Mark Twain
“It was a new business to me, and I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says:“Yes; the little ones does.””
— Mark Twain
“А ведь я вовсе не думал говорить что-нибудь умное – оно у меня само вырвалось.””
— Mark Twain
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Twain, Mark. Tom Sawyer Abroad. Lex, lex-books.com/book/tom-sawyer-abroad-eda3fed0-9918-4779-886a-48474cbf053d.Twain, M. (1894). Tom Sawyer Abroad. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/tom-sawyer-abroad-eda3fed0-9918-4779-886a-48474cbf053dTwain, Mark. Tom Sawyer Abroad. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/tom-sawyer-abroad-eda3fed0-9918-4779-886a-48474cbf053d.
